Mungo Soggot An illegal investment company that preyed on elderly people has been taken over by the Reserve Bank, amid reports that the collapsed scheme’s mastermind has fled to Beirut with tens of millions of rands. The scheme, Proplace, promised many of its customers a monthly income. Many of them depended on this, after investing […]
Olivia Strange Pursuits Sorry, chaps. Although it’s definitely your province, you’re worse at it than we are. Women, that is, and fly fishing. “Their timing is so much better. They’re relaxed about it and don’t become panicked or competitive,” says Mark Eardley, compleat fly fisherman and instructor at the Footloose Trout Farm just outside Johannesburg. […]
Wally Mbhele and Tangeni Amupadhi The controversial Fivaz report linking disillusioned elements of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) and the Azanian People’s Army (Apla) to the recent theft of military arms originated from South African policemen assigned to the Robert McBride investigation. The report claims an organisation called Mkapla (an acronym for MK and Apla) plans to […]
Tangeni Amupadhi The National Youth Commission has declared 1998 a year of delivery after two years of talk-shops and much fuss about the salary of its chair. For the youth of South Africa, however, the commission is doing too little, too slowly. Random interviews conducted with youth this week revealed high levels of impatience with […]
Lesley Cowling A new state-of-the-art telescope to be built in the Karoo will give South African astronomers a window seat on the furthest journey yet through southern skies. The construction of the R100-million Southern African Large Telescope (Salt) at Sutherland, approved by Cabinet last week, means local cosmologists can now maintain their position at the […]
Richard Williams LUSH LIFE: A BIOGRAPHY OF BILLY STRAYHORN by David Hajdu (Granta, R89,95) Jazz has produced several memorable threnodies – one thinks of John Lewis’s lament for Django Reinhardt or Charles Mingus’s salute to Lester Young – but none more affecting than Blood Count, recorded by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1967, a few […]
Soccer legend Ruud Gullit gives his views on how to survive the biggest soccer event of its kind The most important thing is to take the first round very seriously indeed. It is not just a matter of getting the lesser nations out of the way before the real fun starts: teams that think that […]
Ronald Atkins Jazz CDs of the week Discussing jazz and how the free-wheeling Sixties changed the rules, the double bass is often singled out for its newly liberated role. Regarded as the workhorses of bebop, pounding the beat in the background, bassists now moved towards the front. As a member of Ornette Coleman’s original quartet, […]
David Shapshak Buying a cellphone is easy. Upgrading to a new phone when your contract expires, isn’t. You can either just go out and buy yourself the latest hot item to hit the shelves, or play the sophisticated marketing game which enticed you to buy your contract in the first place: sign up for another […]
Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg `Eskus me,” says a heavily pregnant Lila Luna-Skya in her bruised and broken English, “Uh know is not very glamorous when you hav to give birth on stage .” But I mean what can a girl do? Particularly when she’s a foreigner in a foreign country. And not just […]